My Heart
by chromeknickers
Summary: The heart is meant to endure, even through the greatest heart breaks. But what makes us forgive and learn to love again? Another bitter-sweet Blaise/Luna one-shot. Enjoy.


_I disclaim_.

**My Heart**

"Is that seat taken?"

I raise my head in annoyed bewilderment, at both the interruption and the familiarity of a mellifluous voice. Bright, round eyes—cerulean and clear—gesture to the spot beside me and then flicker up towards my eyes, seeking an answer.

I barely shake my head before I turn back to my paper, intent on ignoring her presence, or at least giving her that impression. It appears as though she is not easily deceived, for she takes the seat beside me and leans back on the bench, taking in a deep breath of air. I can tell that she is far from bashful and quite content to sit in awkward silence. After a few minutes, however, I feel her bare knees turn towards mine, and she leans forward, just inches away.

"Would you like take a walk with me?" she asks out of the clear blue in that light, airy voice of hers.

Her accent, like her voice, is ethereal and unnerving. She lets out a soft, calculated sigh—I say calculated because it is the perfect interruption, the most ingenious way to cajole a conversation.

It works.

I involuntarily turn my head and lower my chin to look down at her with unmasked wonderment. _What does this girl really want?_

"My mind, it kinda goes fast," she offers as an explanation, as she tilts her head to the side to examine me. "I'll try to slow it down for you."

I cannot help but chuckle. She seems instinctively aware that my guard is down, so she approaches my castle walls with a mixture of confidence and caution. A lock of blonde hair falls down in front of her pale, smiling face, and I feel the sudden urge to reach out with my fingers to tuck the errant strand behind her ear. I do not give in to this impulse, and, perhaps, this fleeting internal (and irrational, I might add) struggle is present on my face, for I see the corners of her mouth turn upward.

She is smiling at me.

I glower in return.

No, I do not want to take a walk with her. All I had wanted to do was sit on the bench and read the paper, in silence, on a sunny afternoon. I did not expect company, least of all from someone from my past.

I phrased that all wrong. It wasn't as if she was a girlfriend or a friend from the past, coming back to stalk me. I barely knew the girl. In fact, I don't think I had ever had a conversation with her—at all—during our entire matriculation at school.

I open my mouth to give a scathing retort, but, instead, my lips snap shut. She slides down the bench to move closer to me, and my eyes momentarily widen in shock at her boldness. I watch, still flabbergasted, as she begins to fidget with her earrings (which are radishes, by the way). This fidgeting doesn't seem to be a nervous habit of hers. No, she doesn't appear to be agitated in the slightest; in fact, she's still smiling. I suspect that she is waiting for an answer—an answer that she wants to hear.

I fold my paper with a disgruntled sigh and turn my head to examine her more fully. True, it may be rude of me (as well as outside the decorum of my upbringing) to brazenly appraise her, but she invited my scrutiny by unabashedly taking such close proximity to me that she might as well have been on my lap. So precariously close is she that I imagine I can hear her breathing in synch with the beating of my heart.

Her gaze intensifies, and I fantasise that she is boring a hole into my head to extract my thoughts. I shake my head and clear my mind. I will not let this slip of a girl unnerve me so. I turn my thoughts towards numbers, and I do the maths in my head in order to determine that it has been five years since I last saw her. Looks-wise, I have to begrudgingly admit that she has always been rather exceptional—pretty, really. However, her mental instability precluded me from ever considering her appealing. Thus, her looks were never able to draw me in—no matter the purity of her bloodline.

While it is obvious that she is still rather loony, the past half-decade has been good to her. Her long, pale blonde hair hangs well past her waist in loose waves that shimmer with a healthy sheen. Her cornflower-blue eyes are unnaturally large and round, with long black lashes that seem to belie her look of innocence, replacing it with a type of seductive merriment (if those are comprehensible adjectives).

My eyes refuse to travel down past the swan-like length of her neck. I am still a gentleman. Besides, I am quite aware of her litheness. The ability to quickly and subtly appraise the female form has always been one of my many gifts.

I continue to stare, and she, unwaveringly, meets my gaze. I guess you could say that I am enamoured. She is not some exotic, gorgeous creature, but she is unique. With a little bit of grooming, she would be acceptable for presentation—more than acceptable, if I pursued her.

I stand up and throw my folded paper into the trash bin beside the bench. She looks up at me expectantly with her eyes still shining and her lips still curved upward into a pirate smile. I shake my head and let the ghost of a smile adorn my own lips. I offer her my hand, and her grin only intensifies as she takes my arm and allows me to help her to her feet. Hand-in-arm, we have our walk.

**xXx**

The years fly by, and they are…adequate. We never fight. No, she isn't the kind of girl who likes to argue. Debate, yes. But trivial and emotional flights of fancy are not her style—thank Merlin. I am not the fighting type either. I am the Bronze Stoic, as she often calls me. Both of us are so neutral, so lukewarm. We are living, breathing Switzerlands. What we both lack in emotional outbursts, however, we make up for in the bedroom (or at least I tell myself that).

On top of being intellectual and witty, she cleans up rather nicely—like I had assumed. She is accepted into society, albeit reluctantly from both the socialites and herself, and she does well. Even my mother receives her with a pleasant disposition. I help her learn to curb her more flighty demeanour and loose tongue, and she learns to speak only when spoken to and to not veer from conventional conversation.

She often sniffles over letters when she thinks that I am not around or not paying attention—letters from old 'friends', who tell her that she has changed, that she has been brainwashed. I read the letters, of course, and make sure to subtly remind her of why I began courting her and how adorably quirky she is.

And I do mean 'is' not 'was'. She isn't entirely gone. My blue-eyed, blonde-haired loony is still there, in private. In bed, she whispers the most ridiculous things to me that make me laugh or scowl or shake my head in bewilderment.

In the beginning, the laughter had taken precedence, but soon she begins to whisper and laugh less and less, and her once bright blue eyes begin to darken and fade. Her personality gives way to what I want, and the qualities that once attracted me to her are no longer there. Still, I believe her to make an excellent companion—even an adequate wife—so I propose, and she accepts. I am quite certain that our marriage will be well-received and lauded by society. After all, she is acceptable now. The problem is that acceptable does not equate desire for me any more, and so I seek my carnal relations elsewhere.

It is expected, in high society, for a man of my stature to take a mistress. Of course, this is usually done a year or so _after _marriage. She and I have only been engaged for a little over a year. It is a little pre-emptive on my part. It is weak of me, and it is wrong, but I cannot help my baser instincts.

It has all gone stale.

**xXx**

An owl arrives for her. I find it strange since her father usually Floos us, and her 'friends' have not sent word to her at all since our engagement was made public.

She comes down the stairs, dry-eyed, with a letter dangling from her fingers. She looks at me and offers a smile—the thin, tight-lipped kind. Feigned.

"I think I'd like to take a walk," she says as she folds the parchment and slips it inside the pocket of her dress.

I rise to my feet, knowing that I am to join. The walk is just a pretext for what she wants to do: talk. She will, most likely, divulge the contents of the letter, as a dutiful fiancée should.

I help her with her coat, and we both step outside. It is late spring—sunny and warm—a beautiful day, like the one we met on three years ago. We step outside and perambulate about the yard, not really going anywhere—more so just inspecting the daffodils and taking in the fresh air. We continue in uncomfortable silence until she stops walking, and I turn around to face her.

"I know," she states quietly, her voice barely lifting above the gentle breeze and the cheerful singing of birds.

"Know what, Dear?" I ask, somewhat suspicious of where this conversation may be heading. _What is in that letter?_

As if to answer my thoughts, she produces the parchment from her pocket and hands it to me. Before I can reach out to take it, she lets it slip from her fingertips to fall to the ground. I furrow my brow and watch the letter flutter in the breeze until it lands on the grass, half-opened for me to read. I only catch a glimpse of the calligraphy-style writing, but the signature and its hands are instantly recognisable to me. It is a letter from one of my paramours.

She knows.

Her eyes are still dry, but they are not as round and wide as they used to be—no longer full of dreams. Her lips are not curved upward into that pirate smile of hers. She is gone. Her blonde hair whips at her face, and I have the sudden urge to reach out with my fingers to tame her locks, to hold her cheeks and kiss her. I know that she would allow this, but it would be a futile gesture, on my part.

"I want to give you something," she says slowly, arduously, as she puts her small, cold hand in mine. "Something I've been wanting to give to you for years..."

"What is that?" I ask with a dry throat, feeling the weight of something small and cool slip into my palm.

"My heart."

**xXx**

The years pass, and they have been miserable, for me. I still come to visit her, to see the light that was once my best friend—a girl I changed, who should have never been anyone but herself.

The years have been good to her, and she seems as happy as she's ever been. The day she left me was the day she became whole again, and this pleases me more than I could ever admit.

We try to be friends. Well, she tries. She is such a forgiving soul. I, on the other hand, am not. Of course, there is nothing for her to apologise for. I am ashamed. I am afraid that I will hurt her again. I—I am not worthy of her friendship or her pity.

So I am resistant, for a year, but then she slowly wears me down, and I cannot see my life without her in it. I bend for her. I am at her beck and call, but she rarely calls, and I am made to feel broken and incomplete.

I have tried, so many times, to tell her that I am sorry, that I want her back. I have so many excuses: I was young; I was foolish; I was selfish. I was so wrapped up in the exterior world that I failed to cultivate the interior one: the bond between her and me. But my words, they don't come out right, so I try to tell her that I am happy for her. She knows it's a half-truth. She sees through my lies and forgives me of my trespasses.

We continue on. We talk. We laugh. We breathe. She smiles, and I feel a part inside of me roll over in pain and agony. My entire body feels forever wreathed in flames—a pain that can never be numbed.

She never dated after us. Neither did I. I tell others that I am too busy. She tells others the truth. I wish that I could be as brave as her.

We go to a café that we used to frequent during our courtship. We take the table near the window and sip at our teas while we people watch and laugh. She talks about what she reads and writes. I talk about work. We laugh.

"Would you like to take a walk with me?" I ask her as I stand up, offering her my arm.

She raises an eyebrow in scepticism (I taught her well), and I offer her a pirate smile.

"My mind, it kinda goes fast," I explain seriously, "but I can try to slow it down for you."

There is a twinkle in her cerulean blues, and she returns my pirate smile with vigour and gives a slight nod of her head. She then stands up and takes my arm, and I lead her outside, down the path that we had taken so many times in our courtship—both figurative and literal.

There is a pause, a moment of silence between us, but it is no longer awkward. The words that I had tried to express for over a year finally tumble past my lips, and I come to her as a frightened boy.

"Luna, I can't change what I did," I admit with eyes downcast. "I can never take it back."

I look up hesitantly to see her large, round eyes gazing into mine, waiting.

"But I can spend my entire life making it up to you," I announce as I step towards her.

She does not flinch or back away. She just stares at me intently, gauging my next move.

I smile nervously and slide my hand into hers. "I want to give you something—something I've been wanting to give to you for years…"

My voice wavers, and she looks up at me with a mixture of heartache and hope, waiting for me to finish a sentence that she had delivered to me so many years ago.

"My heart."

**Fin**

**Author notes**: Another Blaise/Luna fic that I was inspired to write while busy at work. This time, however, it is not a song-fic. However, it was inspired by Blue October's _Congratulations _(with regards to the repeated lines: "I want to give you something I've been wanting to give you for years: my heart").

Many thanks to **Ann** for looking over this for me. As always, her in-text comments make me giggle.


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